


Stubborn

by sxetia



Category: Pathologic 2, Мор. Утопия | Pathologic
Genre: Character Study, Death loop, Drabble, Gen, Present Tense, Second Person, Vignette, but nothing textual, implied lara/artemy, mild spoilers if you squint, strength through wounding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:27:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24094318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxetia/pseuds/sxetia
Summary: Fall down; get back up.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14





	Stubborn

One wrong turn when making your way through the Knots; and a brute who compensated for his lesser willpower with the sharp end of a blade. Your guts splaying out all over the earthen green of your smock, and then your head hitting cobbled streets before he begins to rummage through your rucksack.

Fall down, get back up.

An overestimation of your body's limits and the bare minimum which it needed to survive. Your oversized heart cries out louder than your brain, and you choose to go another day without bread so that you may scrounge together enough coin to purchase medicine for the sick. Your knee gives out as you shamble down the steps into your Lair and you tumble down the concrete, and when you hit the bottom you find your limbs too weak and bones too neglected to push yourself off the ground.

Fall down, get back up.

Your temper and field training get the best of you during a confrontation with the Bachelor, and you figure your brawn can easily outmatch the gleam of a silver barrel in gloved hands. The sound of gunfire echoes off the walls of your father's house, you are deafened, and your shoulder goes numb. The house you were born in becomes the house that you die in.

Fall down, get back up.

Nude and afraid, the taste of iron and sanguine in your tongue and the chants of your kin in your ears. The dull flames of the torches can only illuminate the blood of the Odonghs through the darkness, a silhouette of crimson that preludes the sight of bulging eyes and a hulking stature. A fist driven straight between its eyes and then a missed left hook, only for your skull to immediately be crushed by the force of its fist. You lose all lucid thought as you bleed out on the dirt, once again one with the Earth.

Fall down, get back up.

Meters away from the Shelter, the cure to your dearest's suffering in your grasp and the Sand Pest in your lungs. You find one breath more shallow than the last, and the next yet thinner than that. The aching in your limbs is greater than any pain you've ever known, and yet it is pale compared to the thought of losing one more soul, of failing one last time. Eventually, you find you can't breathe at all anymore. The Healer goes unhealed and the plague claims another victim, and you become a statistic in the dried-out grass in front of Lara's house.

And yet still, you press forward.

Fall down.

**Get. Back. Up.**


End file.
